The present invention relates to a photographic printer, and more particularly to a photographic printer which can make prints not only from a film but also from a video image display.
Photographic printers for selectively printing a video image displayed on a CRT screen and a photographic image recorded on a photographic film on a photographic paper are known. Such a photographic printer is provided with a lamp unit for displaying a video image thereon. The video image is directed and projected onto the photographic paper by a reflective mirror removably placed in a video image printing path. Because the CRT unit and the lamp unit are separately provided and placed interchangeably in the printing path by means of the reflective mirror, this type of photographic printer unavoidably becomes complicated in structure and large in size.
In an attempt at avoiding a large, complicated structure in a photographic printer, it was thought that a CRT should be used not only to display a video image but also to illuminate a negative film, as a light source. However, because luminance of general CRTs is considerably lower than that of halogen lamps, prolonged exposure time is needed to make a print from a negative film, so that it is difficult to use the printer with a high efficiency. Furthermore, because of flickering of images displayed on the CRT because of raster scanning, it is unsatisfactory to use the CRT as a light source for illuminating a negative film.